Mission

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Established in 1974, Trustees for Alaska has remains the legal backbone of environmental advocacy in Alaska. Our client list includes local and national conservation groups, Native villages, statewide coalitions, fishing groups, and individual Alaskans. Our services are free, and for most of our Alaskan clients, we provide legal counsel they could not otherwise afford. Our lawyers have been in the vanguard of issues large and small which continue to shape Alaska's environmental future-oil and gas development, mining, toxic wastes, air and water pollution, public land use, and protection of marine resources. While our successes have set significant legal precedent in environmental law on state and national levels, the primary need for our work is to ensure a wild, vibrant Alaska where fish, wildlife, and people thrive. With our expertise in federal statutes and regulations and Alaska's unique legal framework, we have set legal precedents and won significant victories.

Mission

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Established in 1974, Trustees for Alaska has remains the legal backbone of environmental advocacy in Alaska. Our client list includes local and national conservation groups, Native villages, statewide coalitions, fishing groups, and individual Alaskans. Our services are free, and for most of our Alaskan clients, we provide legal counsel they could not otherwise afford. Our lawyers have been in the vanguard of issues large and small which continue to shape Alaska's environmental future-oil and gas development, mining, toxic wastes, air and water pollution, public land use, and protection of marine resources. While our successes have set significant legal precedent in environmental law on state and national levels, the primary need for our work is to ensure a wild, vibrant Alaska where fish, wildlife, and people thrive. With our expertise in federal statutes and regulations and Alaska's unique legal framework, we have set legal precedents and won significant victories.

Impact Information

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Impact Information

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Charting Impact

What is your organization aiming to accomplish?

Trustees for Alaska works to protect and defend Alaska's natural environment on behalf of Native villages, community groups, and local and national conservation groups by providing legal services, policy advice, and strategic counsel free of charge. We provide legal services on issues where our advocacy affords the maximum benefit to Alaska's environment by using a broad range of legal tools to find solutions to Alaska's toughest environmental problems. Our current most important conservation issues and legal cases include: • Continuing involvement in proactive campaigns to protect lands in the Arctic, keep fossil fuels in the ground to slow climate change, and defend Bristol Bay from large-scale mining; • Ongoing work on active state and federal cases to keep water in streams for fish, protect communities from the harmful impacts of mining and oil and gas development, and safeguarding Wilderness; • Analyzing legislative and other changes to environmental laws; • Evaluating resource extraction and industrial infrastructure projects to make sure the law is followed and supports strong citizen involvement; and • Working to address broader environmental policy questions relating to climate change and citizen participation in natural resource decision making.

What are your strategies for making this happen?

Trustees for Alaska addresses environmental problems proactively and collaboratively with our conservation partners. We develop creative and innovative legal approaches to work seamlessly with the organizing and communications strategies of our partners while also providing the legal context in that structure. Trustees for Alaska uses these strategies to defend Alaska's natural environment and its people, who are the most affected by environmental policy decisions made in Alaska and Washington, D. C. Trustees for Alaska also has had a long history of working with Native communities. These communities have the most to lose when large resource extraction projects move forward, affecting subsistence resources that the communities rely upon for survival. We work strategically with our Native clients, and at times bring them together with conservation groups to provide a united front on issues related to protecting Alaska. This work helps broaden the conservation movement and helps strengthen the overall campaigns, and in turn, increases our chances of success.

What are your organization's capabilities for doing this?

Trustees for Alaska has been the legal backbone of environmental advocacy in Alaska for nearly 45 years. Our successes have set significant legal precedents in environmental law on the state and national levels. Internally, we use a strong team approach to our work; each project has attorneys working together, and at weekly meetings, all the attorneys brainstorm ideas and new approaches to issues. Trustees for Alaska values leadership, excellence, innovation, and integrity in our work. We encourage professional and leadership training for our staff so we can continue to produce high quality work, and hold to high ethical and professional standards. We currently have six full-time attorneys, two that have been practicing environmental law for more than 15 years. Each summer we recruit legal interns that will gain experience while working on substantive issues with our attorneys. Our non-legal staff includes professionals in administration, management, communications and development. We are active in raising awareness and increasing financial support from individuals to support our mission. Additionally, we have a quasi-endowment that provides added financial security. This makes us well positioned to achieve our goals and be nimble to take on new challenges as they arise.

How will your organization know if you are making progress?

Trustees defines success by the outcomes of our litigation, and any administrative changes that occur as a result of our work, and if our legal advice to the conservation community results in non-ligation wins for Alaska's protection. The more tangible indicators of success include positive changes in the law or plans for public lands, stopping the worst developments from proceeding or mitigating the worst of their impacts, and that our coalition partners carry out successful organizing and lobbying efforts. We undertake this evaluation on an ongoing basis: at weekly staff meetings; weekly attorney meetings; board meetings; meetings with clients and coalitions; etc. Under our strategic plan, we are undertaking formal outcomes-based evaluation of our progress. This learning provides the information for us to continue to improve our legal services to our clients and protect and defend Alaska's lands, waters, wildlife, and communities.

What have and haven't you accomplished so far?

Over the last 43 years, Trustees for Alaska's legal actions have protected special areas in the Arctic and Bristol Bay from oil development and reduced pollution at existing Alaska oil and gas operations. We have used effective legal strategies to protect our oceans from industrial overfishing and our national parks from air pollution and damage from off-road vehicles. Over the last decade, we have built effective coalitions to fight environmental threats and mobilize people to act. As a result, we win a lot more, and at times, without litigation. We have decades of experience fighting hostile political regimes. Often this means fighting just to stand still, although well-fought battles have benefits and we achieve secondary goals. Trustees acts as legal advisor for some of our partners and many are also clients we represent in litigation to protect Alaska's lands, waters, wildlife, and communities. Our continued ability to work well within coalitions—to ensure that we are united in our goals, coordinated in our strategies, and our efforts are not duplicative—is essential to our success.

GuideStar's Gold Seal of Transparency is earned by completing five questions around an
organization's strategies, progress, and results, known as Charting Impact.
Charting Impact encourages strategic thinking about how an organization intends to achieve its goals.
The end result is a report that lets nonprofits share concise, detailed information about plans
and progress with key stakeholders, including the public.
This data is provided directly by nonprofits to GuideStar via their Nonprofit Profile.

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This impact information is current as of July 2019, when it was provided to us by GuideStar.
At this time, Impact information published on this organization's page has no effect on its rating per our methodology.

Financial Charts

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Programs (FYE 09/2017)

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Program names and associated costs are listed for the top programs as reported on the charity's most recently filed Form 990. The top programs displayed will include the largest three programs, or those programs covering at least 60% of the charity's total expenses, whichever comes first.